Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House\u2014roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated\u2014upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, neither the White House nor the President are “overseeing” airstikes in the Levant. If you want to blame someone for the civilian casualties, you have to blame the troops who have eyes on the targets, but that’s not politically expedient, is it, Sam? Neither is the fact that ISIS should own the blame for hiding behind civilians as human shields. <\/p>\n
First, you have to prove to me which casualties are civilians and which are non-uniformed fighters. Which are camp follower women supporting the fighters and which are innocent by-standers.<\/p>\n
The high civilian toll in part reflects the brutal final stages of the war, with the densely populated cities of Mosul and Raqqa under heavy assault by air and land. But there are also indications that under President Trump, protections for civilians on the battlefield may have been lessened\u2014with immediate and disastrous results. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, the Obama Administration was willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans to spare civilians. Read Dakota Meyer’s book Into the Fire<\/em> to understand the ridiculous extremes that policy reached, costing lives of Americans as a result.<\/p>\n\u201cRemarkably, when I interview families at camps who have just fled the fighting, the first thing they complain about is not the three horrific years they spent under ISIS, or the last months of no food or clean water, but the American airstrikes,\u201d said Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch. \u201cMany told me that they survived such hardship, and almost made it out with the families, only to lose all their loved ones in a strike before they had time to flee.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OK, maybe they tell that story, because it’s more profitable to tell about their losses due to American culpability than blaming ISIS which seems to be slower in paying for hardship stories.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 27, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered the new war plan to Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo significant changes resulted from President Trump\u2019s reviews of our findings,\u201d Mattis later said at a May 19 meeting of the anti-ISIS Coalition. \u201cFirst, he delegated authority to the right level to aggressively and in a timely manner move against enemy vulnerabilities. Second, he directed a tactical shift from shoving ISIS out of safe locations in an attrition fight to surrounding the enemy in their strongholds so we can annihilate ISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the U.S. military had shifted to such annihilation tactics\u2014a change cited with glee by the Trump White House\u2014Mattis claimed there have been no updates to U.S. rules of engagement. \u201cThere has been no change to our continued extraordinary efforts to avoid innocent civilian casualties,\u201d he told reporters. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Avoiding” civilian casualties is a reasonable goal, but like I said, this war has gone on for as long as it has because these fellows in the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, al Shabbab, etc…, like to hide themselves in among civilians, so some civilians are going to get hurt and killed when they do it more often as the war closes in on the insurgents. It’s not like the troops are doing it on purpose – targeting civilian centers, it’s the insurgents hiding behind them that have determined where the fighting takes place.<\/p>\n
But for people like Samuel Oakford, it’s much more satisfying to portray the President and the troops as the bloodthirsty terrorists rather than the actual terrorists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samuel Oakford writes in the Daily Beast that “Trump\u2019s Air War Has Already Killed More Than … Samuel Oakford: The White House bombs civilians<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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